From India’s dirt forests, into the elephant chest of the West we brought a child. Years erupt on skin. You are larger than Canada!—you are not a child. We all see things we do not want to see. In a white world, my father left my mother—she knew she would be a prisoner as soon as she got a child...
You are ninety-eight and blind and nearly deaf and can hardly walk and live mostly in another world now, a world in which dolls can talk and each person appears twice, and in this other world, I like girls, or so you tell my mum matter-of-factly one afternoon as she sits with you in the care home...
Deirdre opens the door, a vision of opulence with onyx hair and topaz eyes. One look at her and Cassie forgets about Ben and the kids. She finds herself in the narrow entryway of Deirdre’s apartment. Cooking smells of oil and garlic permeate the air, settling in her throat. “It’s been too long!”...
Liquid dark slides down our throats, sloshing against curved glass. I place my goblet back on the dash. The evening air shifts, a mineral of many disguises. Body twines within itself. Groaning from the cold, the liver and the heart sit — at the centre of our existence. † A deep and pulsating gloomp...
And while I may look like a prophecy-monger, we shall confine our attention to the clump of houses in a seaport subdivision, home to Lancelotti the Italian abbot, a respectable and veracious man save for his tentacle suckers, big as saucer lids. Absolutely I am governed by sunbeams. When death...
I love you pandemic o sweet sweet pandemic. I love you new flu I love you flattening the curve I love you doors closed people inside families hidden from view. I love you whatever it is that brings Eva and me to each other’s mouths finally and our shaking panting wanting. Like dogs, I want to...
Reviewed by Shannon Page Christina Cooke, Broughtupsy (House of Anansi Press, 2024), 240 pp., $22.99. Born in Jamaica, Christina Cooke is now a Canadian citizen living in New York City. Broughtupsy, her debut novel, is both a gritty, queer coming-of-age tale and a nuanced dissection of grief...
Interview by Cara Nelissen In connection with the annual Victoria Festival of Authors taking place October 11 to 15, 2023, Plenitude book reviews editor Cara Nelissen interviews Michelle Poirier Brown: a Cree Métis poet, performer and photographer living on unceded syilx territory in Vernon, BC...
Plenitude Magazine’s Genre Bender category is a new call for submissions of hybrid writing. Our aim is to publish work that bends boundaries, to offer a space for literature that doesn’t fit standard conventions of poetry, fiction, or creative nonfiction. Does your work blur the lines between...
